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Robotics Research pp 617–630Cite as

Neuromorphic Artificial Sense of Touch: Bridging Robotics and Neuroscience

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Part of the book series: Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics ((SPAR,volume 3))

Abstract

The development of a neuromorphic artificial sense of touch is presented. The system allows to code tactile information by means of a sequence of spikes, mimicking the neural dynamics of SA and FA human mechanoreceptors. The developed neuromorphic fingertip was able to encode naturalistic textures with a very high rate of disambiguation, up to 97% over a 10% chance level, by means of Victor-Purpura spike metrics and kNN decoding. A neurocomputational architecture inspired to the Cuneate Nucleus was also developed in order to achieve categorization of tactile stimuli in real-time while gathering the data stream. The implemented architecture was assessed by experimenting stimuli differing in the orientation of the tactile edges. The presented results are intended to contribute towards the restoration of a quasi-natural sense of touch in limb neuroprostheses, to develop effective and computationally lean artificial touch systems for robotic applications and to contribute to the open neuroscientific debate about the human somatosensory system.

Udaya Bhaskar Rongala and Alberto Mazzoni are equally contributed.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine (www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates).

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the NEBIAS European project (NEurocontrolled BIdirectional Artificial upper limb and hand prosthesis; EU-FP7-ICT-611687), by the PRIN/HandBot Italian project (Biomechatronic hand prostheses endowed with bio-inspired tactile perception, bi-directional neural interfaces and distributed sensori-motor control; CUP: B81J12002680008; prot.: 20102YF2RY), by the NanoBioTouch European project (Nano-resolved multi-scale investigations of human tactile sensations and tissue engineered nanobiosensors; EU-FP7-NMP-228844), and by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Directorate General for Country Promotion (Economy, Culture and Science) - Unit for Scientific and Technological Cooperation, via the Italy-Sweden bilateral research project on “Brain network mechanisms for integration of natural tactile input patterns”.

The authors gratefully thank Mr. Giacomo Spigler and Dr. Lucia Beccai for previous collaboration in this project, Dr. Simon Johnson for providing part of the experimented tactile stimuli, and Prof. Silvestro Micera, Prof. Henrik Jörntell, Prof. Johan Wessberg and Prof. Paolo Dario for thoughtful scientific discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (SSSA), I-56025, Pontedera, Pisa, Italy

    Udaya Bhaskar Rongala, Alberto Mazzoni, Domenico Camboni, Maria Chiara Carrozza & Calogero Maria Oddo

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  1. Udaya Bhaskar Rongala
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  2. Alberto Mazzoni
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  3. Domenico Camboni
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  4. Maria Chiara Carrozza
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  5. Calogero Maria Oddo
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Correspondence to Maria Chiara Carrozza or Calogero Maria Oddo .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova, Italy, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy , Pisa, Italy

    Antonio Bicchi

  2. Inst. für Informatik, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg Inst. für Informatik, Freiburg, Germany

    Wolfram Burgard

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Rongala, U.B., Mazzoni, A., Camboni, D., Carrozza, M.C., Oddo, C.M. (2018). Neuromorphic Artificial Sense of Touch: Bridging Robotics and Neuroscience. In: Bicchi, A., Burgard, W. (eds) Robotics Research. Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60916-4_35

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60916-4_35

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